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November 24, 2011

CC Magic — The Custom Content Manager for TS3 by Grant Hess

Custom Content management for The Sims 3 has become a challenge. There are literally multiple gigabytes of custom content available for the game. This introduces a couple of issues to the game that plague players.

Game Lag : When you have more than about 200 custom content files, the game begins to slow down noticeably. This is a limitation of the way modern computer operating systems work, not an issue with the game itself.
Organization : What do you do if you decide you don’t want a particular custom object anymore? How do you find it? What if you just want to disable it temporarily while testing another similar object? With thousands of CC files, it can be very difficult to track down any specific CC item.

CC Magic is a way to conquer both of these issues. CC Magic allows you to organize your custom content into a hierarchy of “sets” much like file folders, thereby allowing you to find and manage your CC however you wish. Unlike using file folders to manage your package files, CC Magic knows what those files contain and can show you information from the packages to help identify them. For example, for most items it can show you a thumbnail of the item as well as a name and description.

This looks like it could be a really good utility! I'd personally test it only after backing up all my CC just in case, but here's hoping it stops the massive amount of lag in my game, at least a little :)

"Lol at the first comment... c'mon, asking without reading? What kind of moron are you?"

You can tell from the syntax of the entire comment (and their blogger profile) that English is not the person's first language. Maybe they didn't read because they couldn't understand. It seems like they tried to use a translator just to leave that comment.

There is no need to call people morons when it's something this obvious. You only end up looking elitist and ignorant yourself. I'm a member of several sites that are not in English and translators can give you some very weird results that really make very little sense in actuality. So the "just use a translator!" does not always work.

i can't get it to work at meit freezes when it wants to import the download map where all the sims3packs files are in... then i try remove some of them and it comes againit freezes most at pattern, windows, astrasims's files so i got pretty tired of it only time it works fine is when u remove the files from downloads so i only can read ur mods

^^ The first anon doesn't said, I don't understand and asks if someone could explain it in a simple way. He says "I haven't read". With such a simple sentence there's no mistake that the anon didn't want to read all that text.

It's still being developed- Granthes is still working on the thumbnails, Shyne. It can only read ones EA generates itself, or ones that are generated in that style. However, it can't read custom thumbnails just yet.

I've found it works better with packages than Sims3packs myself, which works out for me, haha.

The other part is that you can separate the files into sets, and have the game only load those sets. I do this when I want to test out new CC. When it rebuilds, it only rebuilds the sets it needs to, so if you place files into folders like 'hair' and 'furniture', it's going to go much faster.

To some people getting errors: You may need to install/re-install/update .NET framework.

Sense I'm already OCD about my mods folder, all my packages are nicely organized and labeled already. It could be a great tool for sims3packs though. Right now, about 50% of the sims3packs I have are appearing correctly in CCmagic with custom thumbnails. Getting a few missing thumbnails, and quite a few file not founds.

Program has a lot of potential, but clearly alpha/beta status right now.

I tried it but it immediately crashed, so I uninstalled it. Of course, I don't think it would have worked for me since the stuff I have in my game is all in a few merged packages. I do have backup of all my files from before I merged them in another location, so I was hoping I could point it there to sort through what I have, but it looked like it could only help with currently installed content. I actually have lots of clothes that I don't want, but because of the way most files are named, I have no idea how I can figure out which file is which. If there was a way to open up a .package file and see even the texture used I could probably figure out what was what, but I have no idea how to do that.

Will this work with combined packages? Let's say we've got a whole bunch of combined packages and we wish to delete that crappy sofa we regret ever combining into the larger package... Any chance that could work?

This is great, but what we really need is a replacement for the Launcher, working with sims3packs, cuz EA's tool is worse than useless. :( I hate sims3packs, and we really need a better tool so that they're easier to use, install, uninstall, search for bugs, and keep track of. :(

Those who have problems with crashes, if you have some free time and still have it, take the log out of the log file and send it to Granthes- even if you decide not to use it yourself, it'll help him if it's not a problem with a corrupt package or sims3pack.

^ Yeah- Granthes said on the forums he'd wants to, but he doesn't know how to convert program to Mac. Mac is great, but horrible for most individual programmers to develop for due to a locked-in code and no developmental tools.

Sincere question: Will using this program provide a performance boost if one already merges and compressorizes their package CC? I have 5 packages in my mods folder, totaling 73 MBs and about 400 MBs of store crap in the DCCache folder. I know it would be less work for me, but, honestly, I kind of enjoy merging the files myself so I would only use this program if it netted me some kind of performance boost.

Performance boost? Yes. I have 6 gigs of packages and some of them combined. Everything shows up just fine.

Its must better than combining package files with s3pe because uninstalling something with that method is almost impossible.

If its crashing make sure you didn't delete the msi or nav.bin files that it creates in the Sims 3 downloads folder since it needs that to run. You may also need to take out the resource config file that comes with the program and place it into your Mods folder for you stuff to show up.

Quite honestly I've been using it for months and its' been great. I couldn't imagine going back to combining packages myself anymore; I also use it on my sims 3 packs with no problem.

FYI: You can uninstall packages with S3PE. Just sort the merged package by file size and import a copy of the same file you want to delete. After it's imported ('replace duplicates' should be checked by default), a file will be highlighted in grey. Select all files starting from that one to the top and delete.

Updating a file is even easier. Just import the new version and save; the files from the old version will automatically be deleted.

Not directed at the above poster. I'm sure using the CC Magic launcher is easier. But just stating this for anyone who needs to delete a file from a merged package in S3PE, since all the tutorials I've read advise you to remerge if you want to remove a file when there is an easier method available.